


i'm the one who charmed the one

by The_Blonde



Series: tumblr prompts [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Mutual Pining, Wales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-04 21:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13373184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde/pseuds/The_Blonde
Summary: "The cherry blossom taunted Phil, in a really pretty and petal scattering sort of way. Everyone else’s wishes formed neat shrubs, sturdy little things that could withstand anything. Phil’s cherry blossom took over the entire bottom of the garden, catching the edge of his eye line even when he tried not to look at it. His wish didn’t get burnt, it didn’t turn into a curse mark on his arm, it just mocked him with a delicate beauty that seemed to sayyou’ll never find them, they’re too special for you, and Phil (somewhere between the endless lists of placements, all of the neighbourhood pets following him home from classes, a wish that didn’t look like it was supposed to) thoughtI will, just watch me.Or: Phil is a mediator with the sun in his fingertips and a Dan to make happy.





	i'm the one who charmed the one

**Author's Note:**

> For [insectbah](https://insectbah.tumblr.com) who asked for some phil pov from ["i'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12295140). the key word there was "some". this somehow happened. i hope you like it <3
> 
> Title from "What a Catch, Donnie" by Fall Out Boy.

Phil wasn’t supposed to get a stationing. You don’t usually, as a mediator, and his mother thought he was the wrong temperament completely (something she said a lot, watching bluebells twine their way around all the kitchen cupboards, giant sunflowers appearing in the lounge). “It’s not really as nice as here, and there’s no need. We’ve had one stationing in our generation already. There’s no need for you to go”. 

Phil, mildly, replied, “But I’d like to be useful.”

“You’re useful here.”

Finding all of the lost neighbourhood pets probably _is_ useful, if Phil’s honest, but he’s also fairly sure that everyone in the greater Manchester area is starting to get suspicious of him always being the one to turn up at their door with a missing dog or cat under his arm (the cats tend to yell at him. The dogs not so much). “That’s nothing really, anyone can do that.”

He was at the kitchen sink, his mother’s cool fingers wrapped around his wrist as she healed some cuts from his most recent rescuee (a huge grey persian that hadn’t taken kindly to being picked up. It had a voice like an out of tune violin and shrieked at Phil all the way home. He can still hear it), looking out at the garden, or what you could see of the garden under the huge canopy of the cherry blossom.

“It’s growing,” his mother said, like she always did when they were at this particular window. “It doesn’t stop. They usually stop.”

“Maybe it’s just because it’s me.” Phil nodded at the bluebells, the poppies falling out of the tap, the daffodils that curled across the door handles. “I have that effect.”

“Can’t you make some peonies next time? I love peonies.”

“I can try.”

The cherry blossom shed a few petals, scattering against the window. Phil reached out and pulled one through the glass with his free hand, held it between his fingertips. He repeated, “I’d like to be useful.”

“I know you do sweetheart. You always do.” She gave him a steady look, over the gentle warmth of the cuts on his hand closing up. “I can ask your father to bring the list of placements. You could think about it.”

“I’ve already thought about it.” It didn’t work, it had never worked, trying to fit in with everyone else. Sitting on his hands in all of his university classes so that he didn’t accidentally shoot sunlight into the ceiling when he needed to ask a question. The glow of sunbeams at his fingertips. His housemates waking up to wonder why there were daisy chains around the tv. The flowers, in general, were a lot to keep a hold of. Maybe that’s why his cherry blossom keeps growing.

“It’ll be taking over the whole house soon,” his mother said. “Someone will phone the council. We might have to cut it back.”

Phil exclaimed, “ _No_ ,” because he honestly thought that if anyone laid a finger on the cherry blossom then he would feel it himself. The cherry blossom taunted Phil, in a really pretty and petal scattering sort of way. Everyone else’s wishes formed neat shrubs, sturdy little things that could withstand anything. Phil’s took over the entire bottom of the garden, catching the edge of his eye line even when he tried not to look at it. His wish didn’t get burnt, it didn’t turn into a curse mark on his arm, it just mocked him with a delicate beauty that seemed to say _you’ll never find them, they’re too special for you_.

Phil (somewhere between the multiple degrees, the endless list of placements that he wasn’t allowed to take, all of the neighbourhood pets following him home from classes, a wish that didn’t look like it was supposed to) always thought _I will, just watch me_.

The placement list, when it arrived, both of his parents sat at opposite ends of the dining table while he read, seemed a little overwhelming. Places he’d never even heard of, countries he’d dreamed about going to. His father vetoed Tokyo straight away because Phil’s magic, apparently, wouldn’t work there. The Nordic countries, or anywhere else too cold, were also no-gos. Phil wouldn’t be able to get anything to grow and valkyries didn’t take kindly to mediators. All things Phil had never considered before.

“It’s not like picking a university, Phil.” His father watched him read the list, top to bottom, bottom to top. Phil had a lot of experience with picking universities. “We- our magic, what we do, it’s very old. The oldest, actually. Some places have moved on.”

“Some?”

“Well.” His father cleared his throat. “A lot. We don’t fit in everywhere.”

“London?” Phil pointed to the list. “It’s big enough to-”

“Too crowded,” his mother interjected. “Too much competition.”

“There’s competition now?” Phil raised his eyebrows. “Um, here?”

His parents both leant over. His mother said, “Pembroke?” at the same time as his father, thoughtfully said, “ _Wales?_?” in a tone that Phil knew meant that the decision was made. And so it was. 

He took a cutting of the cherry blossom. It shivered as he did so but remained silent, always the only tree that has never spoken to Phil. He supposed that’s something that happens when trees are born from wishes instead of seeds. 

The little acacia that belongs to Martyn leans into Phil’s legs, asking for a shot of the sun which Phil, palms outstretched, duly provides. The acacia has bright red leaves, the exact shade of Cornelia’s hair when she eventually glided into Martyn’s life. Martyn hadn’t even looked, had just gone to a show one day and there she was. Phil thinks, guiltily, that it isn’t fair. He looks. He’s _always_ looking. And yet Martyn’s wish had fallen right into his lap. But Martyn had never cared all that much, had just let things happen in the way they were meant to while Phil just _wants_ so badly.

“Remind me of what your list says?” Martyn said, kindly, in the shadow of the neverending cherry blossom.

Phil dutifully recited:

 _Brown hair - wavy sometimes curly but I’m the only one who sees it like that_  
_Brown eyes_  
_Creative, wants to make a difference_  
_Loud sometimes_  
_Kind, wants to help people_  
_Wears dark clothes and has an aura like the night sky_  
_Soft, but tries to hide it. Doesn’t hide it around me_  
_Sad, not like overly sad, but sad in a way that I can help with_  
_Cares about me_  
_Likes me exactly the way I am_

Martyn smiled. “They sound like someone I’m going to like,” and the gold of his aura glittered like someone was turning it to face the sun. “They could be in Pembroke.”

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like there’s much in Pembroke at all. They only have a sentinel, according to the list.”

Martyn wrinkled his nose. “Just keep out of their way then. I hate sentinels, they’re always so self important. Don’t speak to them unless you really have to.”

Phil said, “I won’t,” which turned out to be the biggest (and only) lie that he’s ever told.

The cherry blossom was visible from the train station and then from the train window. It didn’t disappear until twenty minutes into the journey, when Phil finally watched it disappear behind a hilltop. The branch of it in his suitcase had already grown ten new petals. 

The wish, at the time, had been something fun. Part of his birthday celebrations. All the Lesters did it, the writing down of your perfect person, the gentle teasing of your family as they read through your choices, the planting of it in the garden, with a vow to protect and love that person if you found them, and then it would grow into a shrub, a small reminder of what you’d asked for. Unless you were Phil, then your wish would become an unstoppable cherry blossom, the first cherry blossom that they’d ever had. No one was entirely sure what it had meant, other than Phil’s person, the ten items on a list, must be special. Unique even.

“It probably,” his father said, hand to Phil’s shoulder, “Means that they’re going to be impossible to find.”

“I’ll find them,” Phil replied. “I know I will.”

By the time he gets to Pembroke and unpacks his things the cherry blossom has sprouted two more branches. Dahlias start growing up the staircase within minutes. Phil watches them unfurl huge peach coloured petals and sighs. The flowers mainly grow when he’s happy but, more often than not, they seem to appear wherever he is (thankfully they seem to have some sense of when he’s alone otherwise university would have been a little awkward).

There’s an elm tree one street over that looks incredibly happy to see Phil start his rounds. It pats leaves all over Phil’s hair and says, “Nos da! Nos da!” Phil repeats the words back, he’d taken online Welsh classes before he arrived, knows the basics. The tree seems happy about this. It touches Phil’s forehead. “Ci!”

“Dog?” Phil replies. “No, not right now. How did you know that?”

The elm almost shrugs. 

The hills along the coast are high and sweeping, the grass almost reaches Phil’s knees, moving like waves in the wind. The town isn’t far away from the sea but it looks that way when he gazes back, trying to work out where his house (his home now, he supposes) is but he’s already forgotten the street layout. His sense of direction has never been strong.

He finds a lost looking tabby cat which immediately tries not to look lost and then tries to tell him that she’s out having a adventure and absolutely doesn’t need his help, thank you very much (both things that cats do very frequently). Her name, when Phil finally gets close enough to look at its collar, is Mabel and she yowls all the way to her house about Phil’s terrible manners and how he smells like a dog.

“I sometimes am one,” Phil tells her.

“Great,” says Mabel. Cats always sound like string instruments, sometimes in tune, sometimes not. Mabel sounds like a very well loved cello that’s hitting a lot of wrong notes. “A shapeshifting mediator. Just what we needed.”

“Sorry. I don’t do it that often.”

“The shapeshifting or being a mediator?”

“Oh. Both. Sort of both. I used to shift more when I was younger. It’s just all a bit inconvenient now. You have to find somewhere to leave your clothes, and you end up covered in dirt, and-”

“And the being a mediator?”

“This is my first stationing.” Phil locates Mabel’s house, knocks on the front door. “I picked it because it looked quiet.”

“Oh dear,” Mabel says. “You made a huge error of judgement then.”

Phil wants to say _Pardon?_ but the door opens at that exact moment so instead he says, “I found your cat,” and hands Mabel over. 

The elm tree, when he gets back, gives a steady stream of frantic Welsh that Phil can’t follow and pulls at his jacket as though trying to get him to turn and face the sea.

***

He finds a job in the local supermarket, because it’s apparently important to have a real job otherwise people ask questions. Phil isn’t sure what type of questions exactly but he does as he’s told and signs up for the 2am-6am shift. A fact that seems to genuinely surprise the shop manager. He’s staring at her aura, the pale pink of marshmallows, when he notices the store noticeboard, which has precisely one poster on it.

The manager (Louise! Phil remembers) follows his gaze. “Oh, that’s just-”

“A missing persons poster?” 

Louise’s aura curdles a little. “It’s a bit dramatic to call it that. She’ll come back. People don’t go missing from around here. You can start tomorrow? No one ever signs up for the night shift usually but I’ve ended up with two of you.”

Phil says, “Two?”

“Yes. Dan’s the other one, he’ll be showing you around. He only started a few weeks ago. He’s from England too, actually. Strange how you both ended up here together.”

The poster appears on all the trees overnight. Phil stops to read one (Delyth Evans. Her hair is orange and her smile is unsure. She looks like someone who hates having her photo taken) and frowns. He assumes that this other night shift person, this Dan, must be the sentinel. If not Dan then it has to be the loud American that Louise had introduced him to (Mark, possibly? He’d been carrying a crate on each shoulder and had an aura the colour of a setting sun). Phil touches the tree behind the poster and feels something like fear. Or anxiety. He flattens his palm against the bark and releases some sun, just a small bit, enough for some warmth. The tree sighs.

“I don’t think it’s as quiet as I was expecting,” he tells Martyn, later, when he’s about to leave for work. “There’s already a missing girl. And the trees are really scared by something.”

“Wow,” Martyn says. “I’m not telling Mum any of this.”

“Please don’t.” Phil looks through the wildflowers that are now crammed across his windowsill. It’s dark and the wind is picking up. He really doesn’t want to go outside. “Just tell her that it’s as quiet as I thought it was going to be. No one’s even that worried about the girl. They keep saying that she’s going to come back.” 

“You can add her to your list of things to find,” Martyn replies, but gently. Phil’s List of Things to Find varies from week to week, all of entries changing except the first one. The most important one. Phil had spent so much time looking. There’s never a moment where he’s _not_ looking, counting the waves in people’s hair, trying to establish if they’re the type of loud that he meant, if their aura is just the right shade. “You should go for a run,” Martyn adds. “Clear your head. That usually works, right?”

Phil says, “A run?” followed by, “Oh, you mean, a shifted run.”

“Like we used to!” Martyn agrees. “I can’t fly over there to keep you on track though so, uh, remember your surroundings.”

The shifting is as awkward as ever. It’s not _painful_ , it just aches very slightly. The slow stretching out of his limbs. Everyone else in his family turns into something smaller (a bird, a dormouse, a frog) but Phil has always had to be the exception to the usual Lester rules. He changes in the alleyway between his house and the next, stores his clothes in the recycling box and bounds away down the cobbled street towards the coast. 

He used to change much more as a teenager (and as a kid when his mother asked because, oddly, he wasn’t as clumsy as a dog as he is as a human). It felt freer, like he could shake off all of his insecurities and worries and just run. But he’d started to stop, some point after his eighteenth birthday, after the missing wish, because the worries became more difficult to shake away. Maybe that happens, once you reach a certain age. Phil doesn’t know. He runs anyway, jumps through the tall grass and watches the cyhyraeth float above the sea level, keeping a safe distance. There’s a lot of them, the sentinel obviously keeps away too (if the sentinel here actually does _anything_ with all the missing people and the wailing trees). 

Phil wonders a lot about the sentinel. He sees no obvious signs of magic use, nothing to indicate that there’s another person like him here. Everything looks completely left to its own devices. There are so many cyhyraeth that they look like cloud formations. 

He finds the scarf first, sage green and shimmering, tangled across the path. He finds the glove second, the same shade, the same glow to the thread. Phil knows scarves like these and so he picks them up, carries them a little further. He finds footprints, scattered stones, and then, completely out of place on a Welsh hillside, a tiny sprig of cherry blossom. 

Last of all he finds Dan. 

Of course he didn’t _know_ that it was Dan, at the point, but he also _knew_ it was Dan, as completely and suddenly as he’s ever known anything. It turns out that finding someone that you’ve been looking for, constantly, for twelve years is like missing a step and then saving yourself, only to then miss another step and not do so. 

Dan’s aura is like the night sky but not in a way that Phil could ever have expected. It shines grey and silver, the tiniest hint of stars, like there’s an entire solar system orbiting around his head. Phil’s heart, not in his right body, skips several beats.

Dan is flat on his back in the grass, wearing one glove. He watches Phil approach, wariness in the deep brown (of course) of his eyes. When he realises Phil has the other half of his belongings he reaches up and pats him on the side. “Hello there. Sorry, I’m just having a bit of a crisis at the moment.”

Phil thinks _that makes two of us, I suppose_.

Dan retrieves his scarf and other glove. “Thanks. You didn’t go down to the beach for these, did you? You shouldn’t go there, I don’t think anyone should. I saw a morgen tonight. I need to tell PJ.”

He looks awful. Phil, on instinct, pushes his nose into Dan’s cheek. 

Dan says, “I’m fine, I’m _fine_ ,” and pats Phil’s head. “Who do you belong to?”

Phil half-hysterically, wanting to change back to his normal self right here, thinks _to you_.

***

The second time he finds Dan he looks like himself (having run home to change and then run back to work in time to find the loud American outside the shop “looking for a dog, have you seen one?” Phil had frowned, hopefully in a believable way, and said, “No,” too strongly so it sounded like he’d _never_ seen one. The American had looked concerned). Dan is still covered in mud, still pale, and his hair is curlier than it had been on the hillside.

(it had curled, gently, throughout the entire walk to work, Phil trotting at Dan’s heels while Dan mumbled about morgens and the sea and curses, and Phil isn’t sure how he’s found him on the one occasion that he actually wasn’t looking, but here Dan is. Real).

(He’s also, apparently, a very bad sentinel, which is worrying).

The first thing Phil ends up saying, to his wish, the wish that would never stop growing, is, “Hi! Are you Dan?”

Dan puts his hand flat to his chest, like something is pressing there. He says, “Yes,” like it’s a terrible effort and when he looks at Phil he looks horrified. 

Phil pulls at his shirt self-consciously. Dan looks away, looks anywhere else. He continues to do so throughout the tour of the shop, the explanation of the stockroom. Phil pretends not to notice the coblynau rushing to hide, or the fact that Dan slides one of them his phone. The fruit and vegetables, in their pallets, looks far more grey and bruised than the ones outside.

“Lighting,” Dan says, when Phil points this out. 

Lighting doesn’t make imperfections disappear but magic does. When they’re back in the aisle Phil looks at the rows upon rows of beautiful apples, as green and round as if they’ve been painted, and feels suddenly very sad to think of Dan, alone at two in the morning, using his gifts on _produce_. He constantly tries to move himself into the scope of Dan’s gaze, to plant himself in Dan’s eyeline, but it never works. Dan looks at his feet, at the shelves, at the ceiling, if he catches even a glimpse of Phil he sighs and touches his wrist. 

The whole thing isn’t going very much like Phil imagined it at all. He’d thought that Dan would know. Cornelia had known, had pushed across across an entire pit of people to get to Martyn and then he’d come home with an aura so bright that their mother had made him wear a blanket over his shoulders. Dan’s aura is not bright, he looks at his feet as he locks up the store, ignores Phil’s constant talking until he says, “I work best by myself.”

Phil stops. “I like having someone to talk to.”

Dan looks stricken, like that was the wrong thing to say, like everything Phil’s said tonight has been the wrong thing to say. He looks at Phil, properly, for the the first time (not counting the time when Phil was a dog) and his eyes are sad. Sad, Phil thinks, in a way that I can help with. In a way that I want to help with. 

Dan, suddenly, unloops the sage green scarf and ties it around Phil’s neck. His aura glows silver. He says, “It’s always cold here, you need to buy a scarf,” with attempted flatness but there are shooting stars in every syllable. Phil can see them.

***

Phil casts protection charms around all the local rabbit hutches and chicken pens, catches Mabel again, repairs a few broken bird wings, sends sunlight into the broken branches of a sad looking willow tree and tries, and fails, to get Dan to look at him. Dan does not. Dan will not. Phil repeats the list in his head because something must be wrong, there must be _something_ that isn’t fitting right.

His mother says, “It’s stopped growing!”

Phil has to hold the phone away from his ear. “What?”

“The cherry blossom! It’s stopped growing. Did you find them?”

On Tuesday Dan had said that they should only talk in the stockroom and then stick completely to their own sides of the shop. And he’d _meant_ it. Phil says, “No, I haven’t.”

“Well that’s strange. Maybe it’s just reached its full potential now.”

The cutting that Phil had taken with him is now the size of a house plant and scatters blossoms all over the wooden flooring. He replies, “Maybe,” in a very unconvincing tone.

His mother instantly picks up on it. “So you haven’t met anyone interesting?”

Phil, firmly, repeats, “No, I haven’t. Nothing interesting at all.”

If Dan doesn’t feel anything for Phil then Phil tries not to feel anything strongly for Dan, other than a confusing feeling that tangles itself into his heart and his aura. A frustration that he _knows_ this is right, that they should be _something_ by now, not working at opposite ends of a tiny shop. He sees the stars in Dan’s aura when he looks at Phil and thinks Phil doesn’t notice. Phil wants to grab him by the shoulders and ask- he’s not sure what really. There’s a lot of things he’d like to ask Dan.

All of that disappears somewhat when he, back in shifted form, is crouched on a ledge with his mouth on Dan’s sleeve while Dan, with a bravery Phil wasn’t sure he possessed, tries to fight an underwater monster with nothing but some weak electricity magic. He cries into Phil’s side when he fails and Phil loves him for all the stubborn sad brilliance that he is.

***

_Brown hair - wavy sometimes curly but I’m the only one who sees it like that_ \- Check  
 _Brown eyes_ \- Check  
 _Creative, wants to make a difference_ \- Check  
 _Loud sometimes_ \- Definitely Check  
 _Kind, wants to help people_ \- Check  
 _Wears dark clothes and has an aura like the night sky_ \- Check  
 _Soft, but tries to hide it. Doesn’t hide it around me_ \- Check???  
 _Sad, not like overly sad, but sad in a way that I can help with_ \- Check??  
 _Cares about me_ \- ??  
 _Likes me exactly the way I am_ \- ??

Dan comes to work with shadows under his eyes, little grazes and cuts at his knuckles and sometimes bruises on his cheeks. There’s usually mud in his hair. His aura is mostly grey but around Phil there’s more silver. Phil knows this, he _sees_ it. Even when they’re at their opposite ends of the shop, as arranged, he can feel Dan looking at him. He wants to shout _hey, come over here_ or _come home with me_ or _why are you doing all of this yourself?_

Phil gives him a scarf, a swap for the sage green, one that’s a soft dove grey. He thinks he’s being too obvious but Dan looks so awestruck that Phil realises that maybe Dan doesn’t know what colour his aura is, or that no one has ever properly described it to him. He holds the scarf up to his face. “Why grey?”

“It reminds me of you,” Phil replies. 

“This reminds you of me?” Dan smiles. Phil hasn’t seen him smile properly yet. There are dimples that he wants to press his fingers to. He can feel the sunlight already springing to the ends of his thumbs.

***

Dan has a curse mark. One that Phil doesn’t recognise (not that he’s seen many curse marks) and one that he knows, based on the way Dan pulls his sleeves down to cover his wrist, he wasn’t supposed to see. Dan says, “Just a tattoo,” and his aura is a hundred exploding stars.

Phil says, “It looks like it means something. It looks like the type of tattoo you’d get to represent something.”

“It represents me,” Dan replies.

“I don’t think it does.”

“But you don’t know me.”

 _How did you get cursed?_ Phil wants to ask. _How did you get cursed?_ Dan’s abilities aren’t strong, so he can’t have attracted anyone’s attention. Phil can’t see him duelling with another sentinel. The only possibility is rule breaking, but it would have to be serious, and that can’t be right. The mark is too simple, too old. And also too personal. Phil says, “You don’t want me to,” high and shrill, still looking at Dan’s wrist.

“I don’t,” Dan agrees.

“I’m not sure why.” Phil doesn’t try to hide the disappointment in his tone. Dan can see his true feelings around his head. “If you just-”

“I work best alone. I told you that.”

“You don’t have to always be on your own.”

“It’s not, like, a personal choice, Phil. It just _works best_.”

The silver in Dan’s aura circles and spins around Dan at all times. Phil circles and spins around Dan with it. Always reaching out and always being left with his arm outstretched. It’s worse because he can sense that Dan wants to reach back, he can feel the same need reflected towards him, but Dan always keeps his hands at his sides, shirt cuffs clasped in his fingers, hiding a curse mark that Phil doesn’t understand.

“If I drew you a curse mark,” he asks Martyn. “Would you be able to tell me what it meant?”

Martyn says, “Why?” with every letter dripping suspicion. 

“It’s just- Cornelia knew, right, when she met you. She knew that she was your wish, somehow, she knew that you’d been looking, and-”

“I wasn’t looking,” Martyn interrupts. “We’ve talked about this, I wasn’t looking, I think that’s how it works, it’s possible to look too much and then your-”

“But she knew.”

Martyn sighs. “Yes, she knew. Instantly.”

“So how would someone, hypothetically, _not_ know?”

“I would say, completely hypothetically, that there would have to be a reason. I mean, they’d know but there would be a reason why they weren’t making that clear. Is this related to the curse mark?”

“Possibly?”

“Send it over. I’m still not telling Mum about any of this.”

Martyn replies a few hours later, with letters written in the mist of Phil’s bathroom mirror because he can’t text like a normal person, **Don’t recognise it. Looks old. Sorry bro.**

***

The flowers keep appearing. Orchids, heliconias, pumerias and hibiscus in the hanging baskets by his front door. Phil has to give them five solid minutes of sunlight every morning, so much that his palms feel warm for the rest of the day.

Dan, pink cheeked and tipsy, had stared distrustfully at the hibiscus, and turned his gaze, wide-eyed and hopeful, to Phil, who (in a moment of madness fuelled by turquoise cocktails he’d been creating himself) kissed the pad of his thumb and then touched his thumb to Dan’s bottom lip. Dan screwed his eyes up like he was trying to freeze time. It sadly hadn’t worked.

The work notice board gains more missing people. Dan stares at it constantly, looks more tired, the shadows at his eyes are deeper. He throws himself into danger more than anyone Phil has ever met, so much that he wants to add it to the list _Has no sense of his own wellbeing_ _Has no sense of how important he is_ _Doesn’t realise how much I want him to be safe._ Dan goes back to the same place where he’d seen the monster last time, stands in a boat to look for something that’s hiding beneath the waves, still tries to swim towards the thing when he gets thrown into the ocean. Phil, always too much of a distance away, is a mix between a fond _why are you like this_ and a horrified _why are you like this?_

Phil finally gets Dan to come home with him after the last one, the boat incident. He watches Dan stare at the absurd flowers and say, “That can’t be possible.”

The cherry blossom is in the kitchen. It continues to grow. “I like to look after things,” Phil says. “I like to know that they’re cared for.” The “like you” is obvious and unspoken. Rather like the real reason for the flowers which Dan must have worked out by now. 

Dan touches Phil’s cheek in the middle of Phil’s living room, wearing Phil’s t-shirt and with Phil’s duvet tangled under his feet. The touch is everything Phil’s wanted and Dan says, “I’m sorry.”

Phil whispers, “Where do you go? At night, when you’re walking before work? You go out walking by yourself, you come to work with bruises and cuts, you jump in the sea with no regard for your safety,” and shouts _tellmetellmetellme_ in his head.

Dan says, “I like you.”

“I _like_ you,” Phil replies. He watches Dan’s aura explode itself into dust. “But?”

“But,” Dan agrees.

***

(He denies having ever said it, straight away, the first moment that he sees Phil in work. Phil says _why are you saying this_ and Dan holds his hands up helplessly, like all of this is out of his control, like he wishes things were different. Phil regrets ever having wished in the first place.

“I don’t know what to do,” Dan whispers, to Phil but not to Phil. Phil in his shifted form, curled on Dan’s lap. “I’m not a brave person. There’s literally nothing brave about me. Pembroke was unlucky to get me,” and Phil can do nothing but sigh. 

The cherry blossom scatters petals all over the house. Some of them are starting to look shrivelled. Phil directs as much sunlight as he can towards it, so much that his hands ache with effort, but the next petal that he finds is crumpled and brown).

***

Dan gives Phil a scarf. It’s ocean blue, the blue of the sea meeting the sky, a shade that Phil has only ever had described to him before, so bright, so unique. He looks at Dan and Dan looks back, nods and says, “I should have known. The _flowers_.”

The flowers always give him away. Phil gives Dan the sun, cradled between his two palms, and Dan says, “I’m going to change my stationing. I have to.”

“Because of me?” Phil asks. 

Dan sighs. “Because of you.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“You can try.” Phil is pleading, he realises this but can’t soften the tone. “You can try. Whatever it is. I won’t mind.”

“You would mind,” Dan says and then, later, he says, “Rwy’n dy garu di,” twice because Phil makes him repeat it, like it’s going to be the last time that they see each other.

Dan seems fully prepared for it to be the last time they see each other. He walks away slowly, like he has a weight on his shoulders, and turns back to look at Phil when he’s halfway down the hill. Phil smiles and shakes his head. This isn’t going to be the last time that they see each other, he refuses to let it be the case. 

The next time I see you, he tries to tell Dan through the power of his gaze alone, it will be different.

He asks the trees what rwy’n dy garu di means, even though he already hopes and knows the answer.

***

The next time he sees Dan is definitely different. On the floor of the only cottage on Skomer, wearing Dan’s clothes, a huge afanc impose bruise on his side, staring at the wall while Dan finally, stammering and loud, explains what the curse mark is for. Dan, who had come all the way to a deserted island to fight a huge water monster _by himself_.

“You were going to do it by yourself,” Phil says, when he really means I love you. “You were going to come here on your own and maybe not come back.”

Does the curse make you think that? He wants to ask, but he’s still having to pretend that he knows nothing of the curse. Does it make you think that you have to push people away? That you should be by yourself? Is that easier? 

“It’s unfair,” he whispers to Dan, later. “That yours says to stay away from your person and mine is like, just love them and make sure they’re okay, always. The whole thing’s unfair, isn’t it?”

Dan cries, trying to muffle sobs with his blanket and failing. Phil cries and doesn’t try to hide the fact. Dan is Phil’s wish, but Phil, somehow, is Dan’s curse. One of them reaching out and the other having to push away. Sunlight and electricity. A mediator and a sentinel. 

“It’s not fair,” Phil repeats.

***

Dan gives Phil a knife and kisses him on the chin.

The morgen, who doesn’t look like any mermaid that Phil’s even imagined, reclines on a rock and says, “This is all very lovely and star-crossed,” which she repeats as she pulls Phil towards the cave.

Phil says, “It’s neither of those things,” trying to keep his head above water. “It could be star-crossed, but that sounds too positive.”

“There’s no positive?”

“Not that I can see.”

She laughs, not unkindly but not exactly kindly either. “You seem like someone who can see a positive in anything.”

“I know my limitations.”

“ _Limitations_ ,” she says. “Are exactly that. They limit you from your potential. From getting what you want.”

“He has a curse!” Phil replies. “Do you know about that?”

“Curses are there to be broken. They can always be broken.”

Phil would do anything to break it. He’d hand over the entire sun to whoever asked. “I don’t know how.”

“Then I suggest you try and find out.”

***

_Brown hair - wavy sometimes curly but I’m the only one who sees it like that_ \- Check  
 _Brown eyes_ \- Check  
 _Creative, wants to make a difference_ \- Check  
 _Loud sometimes_ \- Definitely Check  
 _Kind, wants to help people_ \- Check  
 _Wears dark clothes and has an aura like the night sky_ \- Check  
 _Soft, but tries to hide it. Doesn’t hide it around me_ \- Check  
 _Sad, not like overly sad, but sad in a way that I can help with_ \- Check  
 _Cares about me_ \- Check  
 _Likes me exactly the way I am_ \- Check

The faerie says, “Oops,” as the entire cave ceiling crashes down, a quarter of rocks hitting Dan and removing him from Phil’s grasp. Phil can’t swim well, he’s never been great at it, but he still ducks his head under the water to try and reach for him. 

The morgen beats him to it. This whole reaching for Dan and Dan not reaching back is starting to cause tiny potholes across Phil’s heart. 

She deposits Dan back into Phil’s arms and says, “Right.”

“Right?” Phil shouts, hysterically. “He’s unconscious!”

“He’s alive though. Stupid brave boy.”

Phil says, “I’d say he’s stupidly brave,” protectively, trying to keep himself and Dan above water.

“He did it,” the morgen looks disbelieving. 

“Of course he did,” Phil replies. 

Phil’s wish didn’t get burnt. It didn’t turn into a curse mark on his arm. It wasn’t star-crossed. It didn’t look like a wish that anyone else had made. It scattered itself everywhere, was big enough to always be in Phil’s eyeline, like a reminder to never forget about it. And Phil never had. He’d said he would keep it safe and he did. His wish is Dan, in a too light black coat on a island that he’d planned to come to by himself, with an entire cave’s worth of dust in his hair because he’d had to save Phil. Because that’s, apparently, how they work. 

Phil pulls Dan closer to him and curls one hand around his wrist, right around the curse mark. It’s cold beneath his fingers so he sends some sun into its centre, like he could make it disappear through sheer want. Dan mumbles something. Phil says, “Dan, you did it,” back and touches his face. “I love you. I’m saying it in English.”

The morgen says, “How else would you say it?”

“We haven’t been saying it properly. This entire time, we’ve never been saying it properly.”

“I’d break the curse for you,” the morgen tells him, suddenly very sincere, moving her arm to pull Phil into her side. “If I could.”

Phil blinks either water or tears from his eyes. “Thank you. But I’m going to do it.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Phil isn’t a good passenger, he kicks and flinches for the entire return journey to the shore and cries into Dan’s hair. Brown, wavy and sometimes curly but only Phil has ever seen it truly curly. _I love you_ , Phil tells him. _And all the stubborn sometimes sad brilliance that you are_.

Dan, later, flat on his back on the beach, blinking himself into conciousness and smiling to see Phil there, says it back. 

Phil says, “I thought we weren’t allowed to say that in English,” but he means I love you too.

***

Dan’s list, when Phil finally sees it, reads:

 _Black Hair_  
_Eyes that are three colours_  
_Peaceful_  
_Kind_  
_Wears bright clothes and has a bright aura too_  
_Patient_  
Cares about me  
_Likes me exactly the way I am_

“This is me,” Phil tells Dan, the most unsurprising news anyone has ever given. “This is me.”

Dan, holding Phil’s list, says, “You wished for me.”

Dan’s face is dotted with plasters and covered with antiseptic gel. He had cried when one of the trees, on their slow walk back to the house, had stooped over and said, “Good work Daniel.” He had touched Phil’s face as Phil arranged him on a million pillows and said _the sun_ with a voice full of wonder. Phil doesn’t know who _wouldn’t_ wish for him.

“For you,” Phil says. “Exactly as you are.”

Dan says, “I love you,” and then a whole string of _IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou_ against Phil’s heart, into the centre of Phil’s palm. It makes poppies appear at the door frame, marigolds around the bed, a sunflower springs up in the exact place where Phil’s t-shirt hits the floor. He whispers _IloveyoutooIloveyoutooIloveyoutoo_ and Dan’s entire ceiling rains cherry blossoms.

***

“Flowers,” Dan says.

“They appear when I’m happy.”

Dan looks at the blossom across his kitchen floor. “So, are they permanent?”

“I hope so.”

Dan smiles. “Are cherry blossoms your favourite?”

“What?”

“There’s a lot of them.” Dan picks up a handful of petals and scatters them into Phil’s hair. “More than anything else actually.”

“Oh.” Phil shakes some from his fringe. “They’re my wish. I told you. Everyone else had little shrubs and, like, sturdy plants that didn’t take up much room. I didn’t. I had a cherry blossom that was huge and better than any other wish that we’d had before. I had a you.”

“You had a me,” Dan echoes. “You _have_ a me.”

Phil, still unsure, says, “Do I?”

When he reaches out Dan is already reaching back.

***

(His mother phones. The cherry blossom tree is now officially bigger than the house and has shed so many petals that the entire street is pink. She says, _Did something happen?_ and Phil, standing on an entire ocean’s worth of blossoms while Dan throws starbursts of petals into the air, replies, _It’s sort of a long story. I’ll let someone else tell it_.) 

**Author's Note:**

> (i'm on tumblr [here](https://leblonde.tumblr.com) \- come say hi!)


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